


one for the road

by furiously



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 06:09:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19864780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/furiously/pseuds/furiously
Summary: They’ve been working together for three months already when Illya first hears Napoleon sing, and he nearly fumbles his drink in surprise.The gang goes out for a drink or five.





	one for the road

They’ve been working together for three months already when Illya first hears Napoleon sing, and he nearly fumbles his drink in surprise.  


They’re in a crowded downtown pub in Stockholm, crammed into a corner with their knees almost knocking together under the dark wood table, and Napoleon and Gaby seem to have made it their newest mission to get as drunk as humanly possible.

Illya sits, hand loosely curled around his first half-litre glass of Danish beer, and watches them.

There is a spectacular, blooming bruise slowly greening across most of his left side, and it’s making him stiff, careful in his movements. He knows that Napoleon is hiding a multitude of plastered and bandaged lacerations underneath his pristine shirt, but unlike Illya, he doesn’t seem to have lost any of his energy for it. He’s gesturing expansively with what Illya thinks is his third scotch (“I want it neat, and I want it old enough to drive”), and Gaby, matching him drink for drink with bottles of pilsner, is laughing uproariously at something he said.

Illya allows his mind to drift, a faint tug at the corner of his mouth as he watches the way the candlelight plays over them both, catching on the gleaming curves of Gaby’s earrings, in her hair, on Napoleon’s cheekbones as he turns his head.

The sound of Gaby’s voice, jubilant and unapologetically off-key, brings him sharply back to Earth, blinking in consternation at what he vaguely recognises as a musical tune.

“ _ Good mornin’, good mornin’! It’s great to stay up late! _ ”

She’s laughing on it and struggling to carry a note, when Napoleon joins his voice to hers, and Illya completely forgets what he was thinking about.

Napoleon’s voice is - for lack of a better, less embarrassing word - beautiful. It’s even and smooth as velvet, just like his speaking voice, brimming with warmth, and there’s a very faint vibrato which Illya thinks would not have been out of place in an American musical (not that he would willingly admit to having watched many). Cowboy’s very far from sober, Illya knows that - his cheeks are flushed, and his perfectly coiffed hair is beginning to curl - but his pitch is perfect.

Eventually the fact of what just happened appears to penetrate Gaby’s somewhat hazy brain, and she blinks, wide-eyed, her mouth forming a little “o” of shock as she stops singing, before she jabs her index finger accusingly into the middle of Napoleon’s wide chest.

“You never told me you could sing!” Her voice is full of outrage, and Napoleon raises one jet black brow, with surprising precision for a man decidedly on the wrong side of tipsy.

“Oh, really?” he drawls. “Must have slipped my mind. I did some singing in the Army, actually. It was all terribly embarrassing, and  _ no _ , there’s no footage,” he says smoothly, his lips turning up into a smirk at Gaby’s disappointed huff.

Illya rolls his eyes, and the movement seems to draw Napoleon’s attention, though how it could have he has no idea.

“Come on, Peril, lighten up,” Napoleon says casually, winking at him, and Gaby slides across the leather sofa to lean against his side. Napoleon’s eyes on her back are fond, older-brotherly and soft. 

When she starts up on another show tune, it’s with her dark doe eyes fixed on Illya’s face, her hand curled around his bicep, and the same challenge in her eyes that he remembers all too well from Rome. He shakes his head at her, mumbles some objection as she grasps his hands, but the harrassed expression he wears is all for show, and he suspects they both know it. He feels warm, mellow,  _ content  _ deep in his bones. He thinks he could happily live in this moment forever.

In the end, Napoleon cheerfully takes it upon himself to be Gaby’s duet partner once again, and Illya sinks back against the worn leather and finishes his beer. He prefers to keep his wits about him at all times, especially when two thirds of his team are not.

Besides, staying sober means that he can fully appreciate the little catch at the corner of Napoleon’s mouth whenever Gaby’s alcohol-induced tone deafness gets particularly bad, and the way a single curl of dark hair keeps threatening to fall into his face.

As though he were magnetised, Illya’s gaze keeps catching at the cut-glass line of Napoleon’s jaw, helplessly following the tendons in his throat where they disappear beneath the collar of his shirt. He observes the way the fabric slides across broad shoulders and strong biceps, and idly tries to remember how the American’s seeming perfection used to make him angry.

\---

On the way back to the hotel, Gaby clutches Napoleon’s wrist and insists he dance with her on the sidewalk. Napoleon acquiesces, flashing her another brilliant smile, and the two of them inexpertly tap-dance through the puddles in a very inebriated rendition of  _ Singin’ In The Rain _ .

Somehow, even in this, Cowboy is graceful, his dancing as confident as his singing, even if he’s clearly never been trained in tap. His perfectly tailored suit jacket straining at the seams, he picks Gaby up as though she weighs nothing, spinning her around while she hoots with laughter.

“You two will wake up all of Sweden,” Illya says sternly, but he’s laughing, too. The streets are quiet at this hour, and there’s nobody around to comment on the admiration in his eyes.

Even when an elderly gentleman opens his window and shouts at them in Swedish, pitching Napoleon and Gaby into a fit of giggles that renders them completely unable to apologise on their own behalf, Illya can’t find it in himself to be annoyed.

He makes their apologies in German, which is the closest language he actually speaks, and ushers them along the street like misbehaving children, until Napoleon recovers himself enough to sling an arm around Illya’s shoulders, the other already hugging Gaby to his chest.

Illya doesn’t even think about shrugging him off.

After a few minutes, Napoleon begins to sing again, but it’s something mellow and Italian; a love song. Gaby doesn’t join in this time. Her head is lolling sleepily against Napoleon’s shoulder, and she seems very content to listen. Napoleon’s arm is warm around Illya’s shoulders, and he doesn’t let go, even when Gaby’s high heel catches a cobble and nearly sends them sprawling.

It’s a moment he preserves, carefully, in his memory, like a photograph. The future is never certain in their business, after all. But right now, life is good.  



End file.
